In the healthcare industries, RFID and barcode are always pitted against each other – RFID is often positioned as the technology that will replace barcodes, which are described as lacking.

But at least one blogger who follows the market (albeit, in New Zealand) is finding that more hospitals want to research ways to make the two technologies coexist more than they compete.

According to Nz Infotech Weekly writer Tom Pullar-Strecker, “a middle ground is emerging, where barcodes would be used to prevent prescribing errors, but RFID would be used to monitor pharmaceutical stocks and for other applications in hospitals.”